January 2009

January 28, 2009

Larissa MacFarquhar's profile of Caroline Kennedy in the New Yorker includes several signs that Kennedy, as knowledgeable and public-spirited as she is, might not have been the best choice for US Senator.

Lawrence O'Donnell, "a friend of [Kennedy's] and a political analyst for MSNBC," is quoted several times at length (for reasons explained below). Sounding like Deval Patrick on a bad day, O'Donnell says that the press has it out for anyone who would actually be a good senator:

“The politics of campaigning are so simple: I’m going to beat you and leave you dead in a snowbank in New Hampshire and never look back. But in the Senate you can be trying to prevail over another senator on Tuesday afternoon whose vote you know you’re going to need on Wednesday afternoon for something else... So the personal qualities necessary for Senate work are politeness and charm and graciousness and generosity, which New York
tabloids have no comprehension of."

The timing seems a little off for that complaint, given that Barack Obama emphasized much the same qualities in his winning presidential campaign (especially in constrast to the "leave you dead in a snowbank" reputation of Bill and Hillary Clinton). And when Obama -- and to a lesser extent, Patrick in Massachusetts -- decided that the press was too cynical to get with their message, they went around the traditional media by posting videos and senting messages directly to potential supporters over the net.

Caroline Kennedy, especially in light of her admiration of Obama, might have been better served by emphasizing that approach, instead going on a old-fashioned tour of upstate New York that was largely panned by the press. Trying to win a gubernatorial appointment through some high-profile endorsements and a few days of front-page newspaper coverage is a 20th-century strategy, and I don't think it's the only way to prove the qualities of politeness and graciousness.

O'Donnell also snipes at the woman that Gov. David Patterson tapped instead of Caroline, US Rep. Kirstin Gillibrand:

What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter
of a former President or the son of a former governor. This is the hack
world producing the hack result that the hacks are happy with.

I don't know Gillbrand enough to determine whether she's a hack. But where I come from, giving a job to someone because his or her parent was an elected official could be interpreted as hackery. At least, it's every bit as hackish as giving a job to the daughter of a lobbyist.

Finally, anyone who would condone the following might not be a good fit for public office:

Caroline Kennedy has always appeared to dislike the press. (She
declined to be interviewed for this article.) Her friends understand
that to speak about her in public would mean banishment. When she
announced her bid for the Senate, she gave a few of her friends
permission to speak with reporters, but several of those friends, after
making the most anodyne or laudatory comments, panicked and withdrew
them, or demanded anonymity. (This was no more than prudence: according
to one biography, when a few of her brother’s friends spoke fondly of
him to reporters, in the wake of his death, they were told they were no
longer welcome at his memorial service.)

I'm not quite as annoyed by the mix of socially conscious and ridiculously self-absorbed goals, but I can see his point here:

It ends with a harangue. "What's your pledge? What's your pledge? I know you got a pledge, what's your pledge? What's your pledge?" The participants chant a quasi-Maoist mantra in unison as the screen splits into checkers: "Together we can together we are and together we will be the change that we seek." Then they all dissolve into the face of Chairman Obama. Now, as readers of this blog will testify, I'm generally quite sympathetic to the new president and would count myself as an admirer. But this truly is the kind of cult of personality stuff that his critics are always carping about. Watching these celebrities resolve into the president's face, like so many pores resuming their places, makes me very queasy. If they had to use an effect like this, why not dissolve into an American flag?

I can see that silly/creepy Obama worship is partly a reaction to a vacuum. After the past 15 years or so of Washington derangement, Americans are wary of identifying with a political party, an ideology, or a rigid theology. And after the Bush administration's heavy-handed treatment of domestic and foreign adversaries, blind allegiance to the American flag isn't going to fly right now.

Enthusiastic loyalty to a "post-partisan" president is an appealing alternative, but it can quickly get out of hand. Maybe Obama won't take advantage of the hero worship to expand the powers of his office. But the Obama-nauts could smother all of this policy proposals by tying them to his personal popularity. He won't get anywhere in Congress if everything he does seems to be geared toward keeping his army happy and ready to do battle again in 2012.

President Obama has apparently decided to offer House Republicans a bone by removing funds for "family planning" -- not only birth control, but also care for newborns -- from his economic stimulus bill:

Under the [likely to be deleted] provision, states no longer would be required to obtain federal permission to offer family planning services — including contraceptives — under Medicaid, the health program for the low-income...

While the debate surrounding the overall impact of the measure pits
economists and their statistics against one another, Republicans
quickly seized on the family planning money as evidence that the
Democrats were advancing an agenda that went beyond the economy.

Initial reports are treating the elimination of family planning fund as a victory for the Republicans and a sign that Obama may be outmaneuvered in his dealings with Congress. But I wonder if Obama is gambling that the image of the Republican Party as far to the right of center on social issues may outweigh any gains the GOP is expecting from being tight-fisted with taxpayers' money.

January 26, 2009

Reid Buckley (youngest brother of William F.) laments the state of the GOP in The American Conservative. Though he doesn't frame it this way, one sentence provides an explanation for the steadily diminishing strength of the Republican Party in suburbia:

When last did you hear a conservative spokesman deplore yet another six-lane highway, yet another fast-food alley, yet another graceless subdivision, yet another Super Wal-Mart or Lowe’s that sucks the life out of small village businesses, yet one more onslaught against neighborhood and nature that is masked under the name of progress?